WORLD PREMIERE Growing up in the US, filmmaker Khoa Ha always knew her grandfather was a famous musician in her native Vietnam. What she didn’t realize was the magnitude of his popularity or the mystique that surrounded his real background. In excavating the story of the musician Y Vân, she not only discovers the man […]
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE Director Isa Willinger asks herself whether women’s filmmaking is characterized by a particular harshness. Inspired by Ukrainian director Kira Muratova, No Mercy interrogates power, violence, and representation as it blends history, criticism, and manifesto. With contributions from Céline Sciamma, Virginie Despentes, Nina Menkes, Catherine Breillat, Apolline Traoré, Joey Soloway, and more, the […]
WORLD PREMIERE Filmmaker Penny Lane brings her inimitably quirky outlook to the art and business of children’s music, an industry generally skipped over by those above the age of 10. Way beyond the grating basicness of “Baby Shark,” Lane profiles performers invested in creating the tastes of kids—artists wanting to shape what children will understand […]
NYC PREMIERE After their father disappeared on Long Island in the 1960s, Mike Carroll and his siblings grew up believing he had walked out on the family. Mike’s lingering suspicions and possibly psychosomatic issues eventually lead to an agonizing discovery. With meticulous editing and a bold, almost subversive use of archival footage, director Patricia E. […]
US PREMIERE Renowned conductor Gustavo Dudamel partners with Coro de Manos Blancas, a choir of deaf performers in Venezuela, to stage Beethoven’s opera Fidelio. As the choir prepares for their innovative performance, the film follows them through auditions, rehearsals, and personal stories of resilience in the face of anti-deaf discrimination. With music expressed through sign […]
WORLD PREMIERE Purchasing a house together in 1950s NYC, three female artists defied societal norms and prioritized their art over traditional roles as wives and mothers. Through interviews with the women, now in their 90s, as well as their grown children, the film explores the emotional complexities of being an artist and a parent. A […]
US PREMIERE With words like “acorn” and “otter” vanishing from a dictionary, Lost for Words begins a lyrical meditation on language, care, and the more-than-human world. Through poetry and acts of conservation like rewilding and path-building, the film asks how naming fosters knowing, caring, and change. With painterly cinematography and evocative soundscapes, this essayistic work […]
NYC PREMIERE When her father, a farmer and activist, disappeared in 1992, filmmaker Ángela Carabalí was just 7 years old. Decades later, a dream in which he asks Ángela to find him sparks a journey of remembrance and reckoning. Blending family testimony, archival images, and Indigenous rituals, Carabalí confronts the silence of Colombia’s armed conflict. […]
WORLD PREMIERE On the margins of Latin America’s largest city, Guarani Mbya elder Maria reclaims a devastated landscape and turns it into a flourishing garden. Through reforestation, medicinal rituals, and fierce advocacy for land rights, she becomes both a guardian of the Atlantic Forest and a vessel of her community’s wisdom. With lyrical intimacy, the […]
US PREMIERE A poignant and powerful story following Afghanistan’s female ambassador to Austria as she faces a life-altering decision in the wake of the Taliban’s return to power. Refusing to represent an oppressive regime, she bravely confronts the very forces that tore her country apart. Through her defiance, Manizha Bakhtari becomes a voice for Afghanistan’s […]